Distraction
by sociallyawkwardpenguin
Summary: Maura Isles is becoming a big distraction to Jane Rizzoli, and Jane's afraid Maura is going to start to notice. One shot Rizzles fluff!


A/N: I needed a distraction from the elections and all the storm-related drama here where I live. I went out and voted, and now my fingers are crossed that my candidate wins. No matter who you're most interested in winning, I hope you exercised your right to vote today if you live in the USA.

And now, on to some Rizzles!

* * *

Lately, it doesn't take much to distract me. That worries me more than I would care to admit to anyone. I mean, I'm on top of my game, at least by all outward appearances, but I'm getting clumsy. It's the little things that throw me off, and while Frost and Korsak are completely oblivious to it, she isn't. And it's her I want to impress more than anyone else.

She's so perfect. Normally I resent perfect people. Who wouldn't? Nobody is perfect, and people who think that they are usually have weird personality disorders that lead to things like serial murder. But not her. No, she really is perfect and resentment is definitely not on the list of things I feel for her.

It's been a long, long time since I've had a crush like this. I mean, I'm talking about more than two decades. I think the last time I got all puppy-dog giddy about someone was when that new kid, Rich, showed up in the sixth grade and all the girls were drooling over him. I drooled too, but in my quiet, tomboyish, removed way that made it seem like I was totally disinterested. Of course I wasn't disinterested, but I was the tomboy, the resident freak, and the furthest thing from new kid Rich's radar. It broke my heart when he took Cindi Stolletti to the sixth grade dance. Thinking back about it, why wouldn't the cutest guy take the most developed girl to the sixth grade dance? Maura would say that was natural selection at work or something. I felt a lot better about things when I "accidentally" broke Cindi's nose in gym class the following week. I mean, c'mon. Who lets anybody that spells Cindi with an "i" play volleyball? To this day I know that Mrs. Anderson, the gym teacher, didn't quite believe me when I told her it was an accident, but Mrs. Anderson was as butch as they came, an outcast among her conservative peers, and I think she understood a little of my heartache. I vowed then and there to never turn out like her. I wanted to be pretty and girly, but I still wanted to play hard and grow up tough, like my brothers. I wanted to look like Malibu Barbie but have ninja skills. And more than anything else, I wanted to be successful enough that I'd never have to feel like I did in the sixth grade when everyone got a date to the dance but me.

Is it any wonder that I wound up where I am today, doing what I do?

I've come a long way since Sixth-Grade-Rich never noticed me, but despite all the efforts I make, I feel like I've still got a long way to go. She noticed me though. Maura noticed me that day in the cafe at the precinct, and I blew her off. I blew her off like the asshole that I tend to be, and yet she STILL treated me courteously and with respect. I don't know why I didn't see it then, but I am thankful to whatever deity there is or isn't above us that she stuck around and became the best friend I have ever had.

I am so damn lucky that she's in my life, and I am so damn scared that she's going to walk right out the door when she finds out that I have feelings for her.

I don't have any intention of telling her, of course. But that also doesn't mean that she's not genius enough to know already. It seems that as long as I try my best to hide it, she does her best to ignore it. Because I know she can tell when my pulse quickens or my pupils dilate whenever she's nearby. I know she can tell that when I accidentally (or not so accidentally) touch her, I feel an electric current that shoots from my skin directly to my core. I desperately wish she felt the same thing when she touched me, but in her perfection, she's never given the slightest indication that she does.

I'm getting off track though. I am starting to get clumsy, and it's starting to get to me. I am Detective Rizzoli and I don't mess things up. But I have been, and she's starting to notice, and she's starting to wonder why.

Just last week, we were at a crime scene and I was holding an evidence bag in my hands. Don't ask what was in it- you don't want to know. Thankfully, the bag was sealed. She came up to me and we were shooting the breeze just like any detective and chief medical examiner would do at a horrific murder scene. Our conversation strayed from bullet trajectories to motives to dinner that night. I can't help it, I was hungry. Of course I asked her if she was busy and when she replied that she wasn't, I invited her over to my place for take out.

She's not the takeout type, though. Sure, we've had our fair share of Chinese delivery, but apparently qualifying for the level of perfection that she has attained requires her to eat things that I myself would never attempt to make on my own, yet she makes effortlessly. So instead of takeout, she said she'd bring over some finger foods that she'd made herself, and we could try them. That got me focused on her fingers, and all the places I'd like her to touch me with them, and I lost focus for a few seconds. She was talking about the tactile sensations of finger foods and how the texture enhanced the taste, and I lost my grip on the evidence bag. It landed at our feet and made an embarrassing squishing sound. I bent over to pick up the bag, relieved that it hadn't burst upon impact, and stood back up to see the most endearing grin on her face.

"Are you all right, Jane?" she asked, barely suppressing a laugh.

"Yeah, I'm fine. Why?" I asked in return.

"It's so unlike you to lose your grip that way." She smiled coyly at me as she turned to walk over to the edge of the crime scene, but called over her shoulder to me once more before she left. "Your place, seven o'clock, right?"

"Right," I mumbled, though I am sure she somehow heard me, because she showed up at seven that night, finger foods in tow.

She is so perfect that when she showed up at my place that night, she made no mention of the mattress that was still on the floor in the middle of my living room. Barry Frost and my brother Frankie were supposed to move it into my bedroom weeks ago, but they were distracted by the hot undercover that had moved in next door. I'm perfectly capable of moving the mattress into my bedroom myself, but that would deprive me of the opportunity to cajole my brother into finishing the job he started. I can't help it. I'm a Rizzoli. We cajole. It's in our blood. If you've ever heard my Ma speak, you'll know I'm right about this.

Getting back to the mattress, we decided we would eat picnic style on it. This was actually her idea, and of course it set all sorts of ideas rolling through my head. I put a blanket over the mattress, mainly because I was afraid of ruining it because of how clumsy I'd gotten. The idea of the blanket being there for activities that may or may not take place later also had occurred to me.

Of course, nothing like I would have liked to have happen that night actually happened, but that's not to say I didn't have a wonderful time with Maura. For starters, she could have sat across from me, but she didn't. She sat next to me. Like shoulder to shoulder next to me. I lost count how many times her shoulder touched mine, but it was often. And intentional, at least some of the time. And when I refused to try the thing with the fish eggs in it, she fed it to me. I knew I should have held out though, because she told me afterward that if I hadn't willingly opened my mouth to try it when I did, she was going to hold me down and force feed it to me. Hold me down. I shuddered involuntarily at the thought of her holding me down, and I know she noticed. I really do need to work on my resolve when it comes to Maura. I cave in far too easily with her, and it's starting to cost me serious touching moments with her. And for the record, the fish egg thing was horrible, but she fed it to me, and I got to experience the whole tactile finger food thing with her, and I got to hear her giggle when she watched my face, so it was worth trying to swallow that thing without gagging.

At the end of the night the both of us had imbibed too much wine and we wound up sleeping curled up with each other on the mattress. I knew that blanket would come in handy. I woke up about twenty minutes before Maura did, but didn't want to move because she'd wake up too. Then she'd leave and say she had to get home before going to work, and the thought of that made me want to weep.

Eventually she did wake up, but not before I had taken a good, long sniff of her hair and decided I'd find out what brand of shampoo she used even if I had to buy every brand out there. Then I realized two things. One, it was kinda creepy to be sniffing Maura's hair while she slept, and two, she probably used some natural organic stuff that cost a fortune and was imported from France or some Norwegian spa of some kind. Maybe it would be better to just ask her, but then she'd probably want to know why I wanted to know what kind of shampoo she used, and that would leave me feeling awkward and clumsy because I would have no valid reason for asking without giving myself away.

When Maura did finally wake up, she rolled over and smiled at me. That thousand watt smile that melts my heart every time I see it. She just smiled at me, and looked at me for a little while. That's the great thing about Maura and I. We don't get uncomfortable when we're silent like that. There's no obsessive need for talk. We are totally comfortable just spending time in each other's space. I looked right back at her, counting the flecks of yellow and brown in her green eyes and wishing she'd just touch my face and kiss me.

She did kiss me. She gave me a peck on the forehead and told me she had to run home and get ready for work. Then she rolled over, hopped up, grabbed her purse and told me she'd see me later at work. I sighed after the door closed and curled up into a ball for another quarter hour or so, before I got up to shower. It was almost painful to wash Maura's scent off of me, but bathing is essential, especially in my line of work and considering the squishy evidence bag I had handled the day before.

I left for work that morning with a spring in my step, but like most days when I walk into the bullpen with a smile on my face, Cavanaugh had a killer case waiting for me. I have to stop saying that. I work in homicide. All of my cases are killer cases. See? I've got Maura wrapped so tightly around my subconscious that I'm even making corny jokes like she does.

But anyway, back to the case.

Overnight a call came in about hit and run. The decedent was a four year old boy, identified by neighbors as William Colter, better known as Billy. Billy's mother has a rap sheet longer than my legs, and was apparently busy with a trick while Billy had a nightmare and wandered out onto the street to find his daddy. Mommy didn't know Billy was dead until the trick left and she came outside to have a cigarette and saw the first responders. Mommy was now sitting in a holding cell, waiting arraignment on a number of charges ranging from prostitution to child endangerment to being a convicted felon in possession of a weapon. Due to the attention the case was being given by the media, Cavanaugh wanted a "female" on the case, presumably to show the "softer side" of the Boston Police Department. Seriously, it's like the guy had never met me before.

I mean, I'm not that bad. I'm not exaggerating when I say that my heart broke when I went down to the morgue to see the body. No child should die, especially in the manner this little boy did. I have to be honest though. Seeing Maura start to lose her cool after the autopsy nearly broke me. The Queen of the Dead has a soft spot for children too, it seemed.

The case itself wasn't too hard to crack. The tire treads on the torso of the deceased child matched the tread on the father's car. The fact that neighbors had seen the father pull up in the vehicle and then suddenly take off again lent further credence to the theory that he had pulled up, not seen his son wandering the street, hit him accidentally, and then took off again. An APB put out in the morning yielded a result later that afternoon. By that time the father had come off his high and was jonesing for another hit. It didn't take much to get a confession out of him as the first waves of withdrawal started to set in.

After the requisite press conferences, assuring the Boston Public that there was not a child killer on the loose, and filing all the necessary paperwork on the case, I'd had enough for the day. I started out driving toward home, but without even realizing it, I wound up at Maura's front door. The red rings around her eyes told me she was feeling what I was feeling. She pulled me into the house as she hugged me, and I let my brain remind my heart that the reason it took her so long to let me go was because she was so upset and because it took us a moment to step over the threshold into her living room. Despite these facts, my heart still wished otherwise.

We spent the night on her couch, Maura drinking a fine red wine and me drinking one of the beers she always kept cold for me. Our conversation wandered all over the place before we finally got down to what was bothering us both. First we berated the fact that a child had to die, then we began berating ourselves for thinking that the poor child may have been better off dead than growing up with the parents he had. Soon the conversation died off, and we began to doze. I started to get up, waking Maura gently to tell her I'd see her in the morning at work. Instead she nuzzled up against me and told me just to stay, because it would be dangerous to drive while my Circadian rhythms were at such a low. Only Maura could science speak in her sleep, but who was I to argue with the sleeping doctor?

Sometime later I felt Maura stirring, but I didn't really wake up fully. I hugged her closer and then fell back into a deeper sleep.

I was in the middle of that nice, deep sleep and was having the sweetest dream, involving a long kiss from Maura when I woke up suddenly. My disappointment with the abrupt dream ending dissipated rather quickly though, because I woke up to a rosy, smiling Maura.

"You jumped in your sleep," Maura said, turning a bit brighter. "Were you having a nightmare?"

Now it was my turn to blush. "No, no I wasn't having a nightmare."

"But you were dreaming." Maura said pointedly.

"I, uh, no. I wasn't dreaming." I stammered.

"Jane!" Maura bellowed. "I know you were dreaming. You were... moaning. Your arms were moving. You definitely were dreaming."

"No, Maura, you must have been mistaken." I really, really needed to come up with something fast. It's physically impossible to lie to Maura, because Maura knows all the physical signs of lying, and Maura was currently cozying up on my chest.

"Jane, your heart rate just increased. I can feel it. That is a known stress reaction, common when someone is fibbing. You were definitely dreaming, and you definitely don't want me to know what you were dreaming about." Maura looked dejected. "Why, Jane?"

"I-" I didn't know what to say. I really wanted to murder my subconscious for putting me in this position in the first place, but that wasn't an option. I looked at Maura, and it dawned on me, based on her expression, that maybe she already knew what I was dreaming about.

"Why don't you tell me, Maura?" The great thing about Maura is that she's physically incapable of lying. All I had to do was turn the tables on her. "I mean, you're all flushed, and you seemed to be awake already and listening to me. You're certain I was dreaming. What was I dreaming about? You tell me. Based on how red you are, I'm thinking you already know."

I have to admit that watching the confidence fall from Maura's face was a little disheartening. She really looked like she had me cornered for a minute, and was proudly anticipating the truth. I suddenly felt like I had taken something from her, something precious. Something she'd been wanting to hear for a while.

"Hey..." I whispered, not being able to stand the disappointment that flooded her features. "I didn't mean to hurt your feelings."

"You didn't." She whispered back, burying her head in the crook of my neck. "Jane, I heard you in your dream. You were talking before you started moaning. I think you were talking to me. I- I hope you were talking to me. Our dreams say a lot about us. Not all of them are true, but I think, based on empirical evidence, such as our interactions with each other, that what you were saying in your dream was true. And if it was true, I really, really hope it was me you were talking to in that dream. Actually, if it wasn't me, I think, well, nevermind. It was a dream, after all."

"What did I say, Maura?" Maura paused, nuzzling closer, taking a lock of my hair and twisting it around her finger and making my skin burn where she was resting against me. I could tell she was calculating her response carefully, because it's rare for Maura to not think before she speaks. She looked up at me and caught my eye.

"You said 'I love you'."

"Well, I do love you, Maura. You know me better than anyone else. You've been through more with me than anyone else. You're my best friend, and I love you."

"But that's not what I think you meant, Jane."

"What do you think I meant by that, then?" The situation was becoming interesting. I had thought of so many ways to let Maura know how I felt, and none of the ways I had thought up were this simple, this easy. Maura didn't look threatened at all. She looked nervous, but she looked eager too. Maybe instead of murdering my subconscious for producing that dream, I should thank it.

Maura sighed, then leaned up on one elbow so she was looking down at me. "It sounded more like you were in love with me. And... and I just wanted you to know that if that was the case, then, I- I would be amenable to telling you that I love you too. As in, in love with you. And also, that if that wasn't the case-"

I had to stop her there. As adorable as Maura is when she tries to convey something considered socially complicated, I couldn't let her be afraid of my response. This was probably one of the hardest things she ever had to do, and I wasn't going to make her suffer through it or think that she had misinterpreted what I had said while I was sleep talking. I reached up and cupped her cheek, and she stopped speaking and looked at me expectantly.

"Maura... it is the case. I've had feelings for you for ages, but I was too afraid of losing your friendship to say anything. I was afraid you wouldn't feel the same way about me, and things would get awkward between us. You mean the world to me, and I couldn't risk losing you."

"So you just thought you'd keep your mouth shut about it?" Maura asked, eyes wide open.

"Um, pretty much," I replied.

"Jane, that's ridiculous! Do you take me for some kind of homophobe? I'll have you know the Isles Foundation supports a number of LGBT causes!"

I couldn't help it. I had to laugh.

"Maur, I wasn't gay until I met you, honey. And in case you haven't noticed, I don't exactly have the best track record when it comes to relationships. Even if you didn't reject me outright, I was still afraid of losing you in the end."

"Oh." Maura laid back down again, with her head near the crook of my neck. She took a moment to process all of this before she continued "Did you ever think that maybe the rest of your relationships didn't work out because they just weren't with the right person for you?"

"And you're saying that you are?" I smirked.

"Well... I'd like to be."

"Would you, Maur?" The grin on my face was so big and goofy it was starting to hurt. I didn't care. "The truth is, don't know what I'd do without you, Maura. But I'd like you to be the 'right one'."

"I'd like that too. I really don't think we'd have to change much. People already mistake us for a couple, and truthfully I already feel so at home with you, so I'd like to give it a try if you'd like to."

"What if it doesn't work out?" I asked, genuinely worried.

"You can't think like that, Jane. You can't go into a relationship fearing it will fail. You and I as friends have a bond stronger than most couples do. I don't think that would change if we decided to be more than friends. I think that our bond could only become stronger that way."

"Mmm." I agreed, getting lost in Maura's eyes for a moment. "You're right, you know."

"I can't believe you were just going to keep that to yourself, forever. You really felt like you couldn't tell me?"

"Well you didn't tell me either, Maura. Are you trying to tell me that all this came as a surprise to you today? That you woke up to me dreaming and realized you loved me?" I asked.

"Uh, no. I'm just as guilty as you are." Maura blushed, and then quickly changed the subject. "So... tell me about your dream."

Now it was my turn to blush. "Well, all I remember of it was that I was kissing you. I don't remember speaking at all. But that kiss... Jesus Maura, that kiss was awesome. You know, for a dream kiss, that is."

Maura looked away for a second and looked back at me. "I don't think the kiss was quite part of the dream, Jane."

"Oh yes it was. It was the best dream I'd had in a long, long time."

"I kissed you, Jane. I just woke up and I heard you murmuring about your love for me in your sleep and I knew I may never get the chance, so I just leaned over and kissed you. And for someone in such a deep sleep, well, let's just say you kissed right back. And yes, it was one hell of a kiss."

"So that's why you were blushing when I woke up, huh?" I asked, smirking.

"Yes. I thought you had felt it and woke up because of it, and you know I don't lie. I was afraid I'd have to explain myself to you."

I had to laugh. "That's a little unfair, Maura. You got to experience our first kiss and I thought it was a dream. I feel a little slighted by that."

Now it was Maura's turn to laugh. "Well, there's no reason I can't kiss you again. Even though that was a great kiss, it doesn't count as our first one. Sleep kisses don't count."

"They don't, huh?"

"Yes. I am sure I can look that up somewhere and prove it."

"Maura Isles, are you guessing? Did you make an assumption? Did you jump to a conclusion without first doing hours worth of research?" I laughed as I spoke, watching Maura start to scowl.

"Shut up and kiss me, Jane." Maura growled and moved her face closer to mine.

I leaned in and kissed her, and it was better than the dream kiss. Way, way better than the dream kiss. I don't know how long we kissed for, but both of us groaned in frustration when our cell phones buzzed simultaneously, each giving the ringtones we had assigned to BPD dispatch. I looked at Maura briefly as we separated, and we both grinned as we picked up our phones.

It was going to be a long day, made even longer by the fact that I'd have to behave myself and wait to explore this new direction our relationship had taken. Somehow I figured the anticipation would be sweet, and the reward of Maura later would be even sweeter. Keeping myself focused on my job and avoiding the wonderful distraction known as Maura was going to be harder than ever, but I'm Jane Rizzoli, and there's nothing I can't do.


End file.
